Sometimes, to really understand something you have to take it apart. That's what Tom Frankland and Keir Cooper do in this optimistic, cheerfully anarchic show inspired by Cervantes's 17th-century novel.

At one point, Frankland actually takes a power saw to the book. Later, the shredded pages swirl across the room like dangerous ideas flying out into the world. Part of CPT's festival of protest, Hard to Resist, this small, flawed (aren't we all?) show with its DIY message and aesthetic is pretty hard to resist, too. It may not start a revolution, but it will send you out with a smile and the reminder that change begins with us.

Each night a different performer plays the eponymous hero (comic Cariad Lloyd when I saw it),suggesting that we can all put on our rackety armour and become a Don Quijote. Like Cervantes's comic novel, this is a show which is far deeper than it might first appear from its punkish, raggle-taggle mixture of shadow puppetry, goofy accidents, makeshift cardboard armour, rambling stories and musical interventions.

It's non-conformist in its method of delivery and, like Cervantes's story about a man who believes fictions to be true, it plays cleverly on the theme of deception, interrogating at one level the fantasy of theatre itself but – more importantly – reminding us always to question what we see and are told.

Not everything works; there are moments that feel a mite self-indulgent and it's slow to catch fire. It's also very odd in so thoughtful a show that apart from Pussy Riot all the dreamers it holds up are male. Come on, boys, women can and do change the world too.

This is an energising piece , which recognises that attempts to bring change often end in failure but that celebrates the magnificent dreamers prepared to die trying. That's not absurd at all.